News

Insightec has treated the first patient in a pivotal study of its non-invasive ultrasound therapy, ExAblate Neuro, for patients with advanced Parkinson’s who have not responded to medication. The device uses focused ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to destroy a target deep in the brain — the Vim…

Worldwide Clinical Trials and Datavant have teamed up to improve research and clinical trial design for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s disease. The collaboration will combine Worldwide’s expertise in neurodegenerative diseases and clinical trial regimens with Datavant’s experience in organizing and structuring healthcare data. It intends to study…

Improved understanding of Parkinson’s disease psychosis (PDP) and a unified approach for its clinical evaluation are key for developing new therapeutics, a review study suggests. The research, “Treating Hallucinations and Delusions Associated With Parkinson’s Disease Psychosis,” was published in the journal Current Psychiatry Reports. PDP has been…

e-Therapeutics recently entered a collaboration agreement with C4X Discovery to identify new intervention strategies for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. The collaboration is based on leveraging e-Therapeutics’ Network-Driven Drug Discovery (NDD) platform for drug discovery with C4X Discoveries’ Taxonomy3 technology to identify new cellular mechanisms that are important…

Dopamine-releasing neurons are important players in the formation of new, long-term memories,  research shows. These findings may help develop new therapies for memory disorders. The study “Novelty-Sensitive Dopaminergic Neurons in the Human Substantia Nigra Predict Success of Declarative Memory Formation” was published in the journal Current Biology.

Anticholinergic medications used to treat depression, urinary incontinence, or Parkinson’s disease increase the risk of dementia, even if the therapy was taken 20 years before diagnosis of cognitive impairment, a study has found. The study, “Anticholinergic drugs and risk of dementia: case-control study,” was published in…

The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) and the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation recently awarded five new medical centers with funding to train clinician-researchers working with Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders. The five centers, awarded at the fourth round of fellowship funding, will receive financial assistance through a…

Special socks using a wearable fitness-tracking technology are being investigated in a pilot study to see if they can detect early signs of movement or walking disorders, like Parkinson’s disease. Inspired by technology like Fitbit  — wearable equipment that track fitness performance like daily steps and heart rate — researchers at Old…

Nearly lightning strikes might affect the systems used for deep brain stimulation (DBS) in Parkinson’s patients and possibly the implants themselves, and particular safety measures should be taken, a case study suggests. The research, “Lightning may pose a danger to patients receiving deep brain stimulation: case report,” appeared in…

Blocking the activity of an enzyme found in immune cells of the brain may prevent the degeneration and death of nerve cells seen in Parkinson’s disease, new research shows. The study “Upregulation of HDAC2 in Laser Capture Nigral Microglia in Parkinson’s Disease,” was published in Neurobiology of Aging.